The leaders of the West dehumanised billions of people to ensure their citizens don’t feel guilt for the exploitation and mass death of the vulnerable.

Lately, I haven't been getting enough sleep. It is because I have been addictively watching until late into the night the Democratic National Convention. America certainly knows how to do spectacle. Although it seems more like an annual general meeting for stockholders of a Fortune 500 company that has had a spectacularly bullish year.

It is over the top with exuberance despite an underlying sense that the status quo will remain but with free refills on coffee. Democrats seem so much like Starmer's Labour government. They want to make you feel good about austerity directed at the lower-income workers. The better off, however, will boast that is the price to be paid to defeat fascism.

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

Right now Labour is doing that with its version of tough love against migrants. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is promising to increase policing to stop "unwanted migrants and ensure swift mass deportations of those whose refugee claims were rejected. It all sounds a bit like the days of Suella Braverman except this time Britain gets to feel good about racism against refugees because it is being done by a Labour government.

You should not be surprised Britain's political class want refugees to be treated as an invasive species that must be contained rather than cared for with compassion. The same goes for any nation in the EU, Canada and the US. The Democrats during their election convention allow racist border immigration cops to speak to delegates about the need for impenetrable border walls and mass deportations of “undesirables” already within their country. If you take away the Democrats' human resources lingo; there is no difference between the Harris Walz ticket and Trump on immigration.

Xenophobia has become neoliberal governments on the right, centre and left best friend.

It diverts the public from the greed of the entitled and shifts the blame from the 1% to the penniless refugee who just wants a safe place to live free of bombs, war or famine.

A billionaire drowning on a super yacht sunk by storms is a tragedy for the news media- but refugees who drown on a rubber life raft worth under 100 bucks are b-roll before the weather forecast.

Asylum seekers crossing the channel from Calais in unsafe water crafts are framed politically as scroungers straining Britain's goodwill and denying citizens social services.

It doesn't matter who governs us because the entitled are brilliant at creating propaganda that divides the ordinary person from who should be their comrades.

Tory or Labour political parties like Democrats or Republicans have the same message regarding refugees. They either aren't legitimate refugees or we'd like to help them. But we have our own vulnerable to take care of first.

The “Big Lie,” used by the Nazis to create hysteria against Jewish citizens, gay citizens, trade unionist citizens, developmentally challenged citizens, Jehovah's Witness citizens, politically socialist citizens, and Roma citizens is now an accepted rhetorical device for corporate news media in respect to refugees and migrants. The Western world dehumanised billions of people to ensure that their citizens don’t feel guilt for the exploitation and mass death of the vulnerable. We normalised inhumanity to other humans much like the Nazis.

It’s not people smugglers causing today's refugee crisis no more than it caused yesterday's. People smugglers existed during the time of Hitler. The people smugglers of that time took money from Jewish refugees to spirit them out of Nazi Germany or their occupied territories. There will be people smugglers as long as we continue to allow our corporations to exploit developing nations. There will be people smugglers as long as we vote for governments that support tyrants. There will be people smugglers as long as we believe our nation's economic plan should include manufacturing weapons of war for sale to belligerents in war zones. There will be people smugglers as long as consumer society continues to enable the climate crisis.

Ring-fencing Europe, Canada, the USA, and Australia against refugees while housing refugees in concentration camps in North Africa will not solve this crisis. In fact by allowing ourselves to be desensitised to the refugee crisis or buy into fascism’s factory default setting that “they aren’t real refugees like the ones in World War Two,” we signed the death warrant for democracy.

Allowing refugees to be detained in concentration camps makes it easier for the entitled to put the next vulnerable group into a concentration camp which will be the homeless.

Britain missed its opportunity to stop fascism when it elected Boris Johnson rather than Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. That election was a coup because Corbyn was denounced and set up with false charges of antisemitism meant to discredit him and be the nazi in the room rather than Johnson.

This is happening again in high and low places to destabilise, politicians, trade unionists, climate advocates, academics, comedians, writers and ordinary working stiffs fighting against Israel's genocide against Palestinians.

We are living in a new age of McCarthyism where refugees, migrants, the vulnerable and anyone who believes in truthful reporting, an end to the genocide in Gaza, honest politics, fair wages, a solution to the climate emergency, housing crisis and cost of living crisis will be attacked, vilified and neutralised. It's about asserting authoritarian control over society for wealth and power. For the moment the 1% are winning.

I still believe we have it in us to stop fascism and make refugees welcome. But there will be much hurt and upset before we make society for the many rather than the few. Blood will be spilt and all of it will be ours.  If we lose this fight, our existence will be reduced to material consumption, watching reality TV shows and repeating the talking points of intolerance taught to us by our news media influencers, as if they were a catechism of hate.

Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co- morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost of living crisis times. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I am offering a 20% reduction in a yearly subscription to ensure my prescriptions can be purchased today. One new subscriber covers that cost. I have also added a tip jar if you are so inclined. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John